Wild baby birds.

[Asue]

Okay, it's that time of year again! A really nice guy came into the store wanting to buy baby bird food. He seemed confused when I asked what kind of parrot he wanted to feed.

The guy said he was at work ( construction-type ) and found a naked baby bird on the ground. I said he should have looked around for a nest and try to put it back, but he said the nest was destroyed and it's sibling was dead.
It was too young to survive on it's own, and the only thing it could do was beg for food.

I don't know of animal sanctuaries that take in orphaned or abandoned nestlings, and I'm sure the baby bird died without feeding and warmth...
It's sad and some people might say it's the natural way of things, but sometimes I want to help more, ya know?

I've learned my lesson and I don't pick up baby birds anymore, but maybe someone out there knows a place that does this kind of rescue?
If not, then maybe the best thing to do is just let nature take it's course. No matter how difficult it is for me just to walk away.:cry:

[linda040899]

If/when I'm very sure that a baby has been orphaned, I usually take it to my vet's office and they get in contact with a local rehabber. As a bird breeder, I could easily rehab these youngsters myself but I can't release them, as I have a pair of Mockingbirds that inhabit the trees in my back yard. They either chase away or kill anything that's back there so I choose a safer option. :)

[Janie]

Yes, any found baby bird that can't be retuned to a nest should be gotten to a rehabber. Unfortunately, even in an area as large as Atlanta, there are only a couple of people who do it. It's expensive and a 24 hour a day job with baby birds. My rehabber told me that at day one or two, many or not going to survive because most of our wild songbirds have nothing but cartilage as a beak for the first several days and hand feeding is very tricky and usually unsuccessful when they are that young. Some even require a gut inoculation that can only be done by their mother in the first 12 to 24 hours of life and that can't be reproduced by any hand feeding formula. I know that is true of Eastern Bluebirds. Even an expert licensed rehabber who knows exactly how to hand feed could not save one that has just hatched. If the baby is a few days or a week old, I'm told that it's fairly easy to save them if you know how (and what) to feed them.